E-commerce Testing – Why Is Testing Important in the E-Commerce Application?

Business over an electronic network was introduced in the 1960s which eliminated the limitations of time and geographical distance and also transformed every bit of traditional commerce. With the mounting demands of eCommerce, industry user can get copiousness of benefits and that encourage every user to take participating in e-commerce for their every shopping need. Purchasing and selling of products or services through electronic systems involve three basic components: A Web Server, Database System, Dispatch system.

What is Application testing for eCommerce?

To develop a robust and user responsive e-commerce store there are a large number of aspects or challenges to consider, from better consumer experience to high performance. Testing of this large-scale, complex process is one of the main things to do to override the challenges, to avoid or minimize the cost of failures and to make this process simple and intuitive. Plenty of options can give the fastidious freedom to the customers to choose any e-commerce trade and the possibility of customer and conversion loss could be higher if unfortunately, your online system is having any least concerned bug. To save your business essence and from serious failures, application testing is a very crucial part involved in the development of eCommerce business.

To give your customers a nice and reliable experience makes sure you have tested your e-commerce business on the front of security, performance, Functionality, compatibility, and usability.

How to Test an E-commerce Application

Numbers of testing outlines are included in the test plan of an e-commerce application. Make sure you are following every kind of test cases from a high level to low level. Any little change in an application can reciprocate changes on several locations so make sure you tested the software from the start to the finish at the time of any update or changes.

Important things one should not forget while testing an e-commerce application:-

A complete testing of whole application is a must. Make sure you have tested the application on role-based authority.

Browser compatibility is an important thing one should keep remembers while testing an application. It should work and appear perfectly on every browser and on every screen size.

Your developed application should have cross-platform features means can be directly run or function on any platform without any special assistance.

By structure, an e-commerce application is divided into four main categories. On the front of applications’ functionality, we need to test all these features: Main Pages, Category / Product Type Pages, Product Description Page, Shopping Cart. After this workflow of the whole application is tested this includes Login, Signup options, Search, Sorting features, shopping cart functionality, check out and payment process. Payment Gateway Functionality is one the important phase in e-commerce application testing and plenty of things one need to do:-

Is product price correct?

Shipping charges and discount codes are applied or not

Payment process works appropriately or not

Emails are generated once the payment process gets finished.

Check whether the application has security and vulnerability issues. An application should work flawlessly on every browser. Hence it is tested on all types of web browsers such as Google Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Internet Explorer, Safari, etc. with a “Mobile First” trends it also very important that application works on every screen size without any hassle. Performance and SEO related things are other common things in your e-commerce application you need to test.

Types of Testing for E-commerce System

Functional Testing

There are two main testing techniques are included in functional testing: White box testing and Black box testing. It examines and focuses on the results of processing. It is performed on the levels of System Testing and Acceptance Testing.

Usability Testing

It’s the black box testing technique which examines how user responsive application it is. Several parameters like the flow, navigation, and layout, speed and content are referred in usability testing.

Security Testing

In order to prevent the data from stealing by the cybercriminal, this nonfunctional testing type plays a crucial role. Security testing revolves around six basic security concepts: confidentiality, integrity, authentication, availability, authorization, and non-repudiation.

Performance Testing

Quality attributes like speed, response time, throughput, resource usage, and stability of the product are tested in this type and also examine and eliminate the performance bottlenecks from the system.

Database Testing

It involves testing of database tables, keys, indexes, triggers, stored procedures, functions and also examines the data mapping between tables.

Mobile Application Testing

Executing the same test script for a different device to test out the application over a variety of connectivity modes is called Mobile Application Testing.

A/B testing

To identify changes to web pages that increase or maximize an outcome of user interest is the main aspect of A/B testing. Well planned A/B testing can be the best online promotional and marketing strategies for the e-commerce business.

Challenges of E-commerce Testing

Some of the challenges of E-commerce testing are showing below:-

Application servers required to test the web applications are very pricey. To set up the duplicate production environment is the biggest challenge in e-commerce testing.

E-Commerce sites are the main targets for hackers and fraudsters because of the thousands of credit card and financial information a typical E-Commerce site stores. Built-in security protocols can be the best option but still, security is one of the biggest issues.

Third part components are integrated into e-commerce business which is the main challenges for the web testers.

Frequent updates occur on the website which overloads the work of testers as minor changes are needed to be tested on various browsers.

Minor or even a harmless bug in an ecommerce application can convert into major consequences. To retain the more conversion make sure your business are on the top of the business hierarchy on the front of every aspects.

One Comment

Great topic! Thanks much for detailing the benefits of eCommerce application testing. This is great because, you have explained in detail regarding how to test an eCommerce application, what are the types of testing for eCommerce application (including the most essential Non-Functional software testing attributes like Usability, Security and Performance) and finally about the challenges in eCommerce application testing. Thanks much for sharing such an informative resource with all of us! I appreciate your efforts that you’ve done. Thank you!